Today IAM Talking with Ethan Bloch CEO and Co-founder of Flowtown, and we’ll be talking about Flowtown’s evolution (thru two pivots or restarts) into the Gift Marketing platform it is today. Keep your eyes open for what they’re up to – this is a shift in marketing that everyone should pay attention to. It’s an interesting twist on influence, guerilla marketing, and stunning people with great products and services, not beating them over the head with TV ads and traditional media.

Free Samples aren’t just for Costco Aisles

Ethan is a whip-smart entrepreneur, tied into the best of both technology (a given), but also into deep roots of marketing and human behavior. He and his Co-founder, Dan Martell (with the rest of the Flowtown team) are bouncing right on the waves of the social media revolution to do things a bit differently.

We talk briefly about the pivots/restarts of Flowtown, where the earlier incarnation to the current model was experiencing rocket growth only to be shutdown and rebooted entirely.

The newest version of Flowtown, off to a great start since the launch in November 2010, focuses on Gift Marketing.

Gift Marketing?

Never heard of it?

Pay attention to the stories Ethan mentions of a little coffee shop in San Francisco down the street from Flowtown’s offices, and the “Crush It” success of Pretzel Crisps, which Ethan almost forgot to mention, but is (ahem) tremendous food for thought.

Unexpected gifts, customer engagement, listening to the market – that’s right folks, it’s a new world, but the good news is… it works. It’s cheaper. It’s faster. And you should be trying it right now if you haven’t already.

Comments or Questions?

Wondering how to apply Gift Marketing to your company? Can you use similar techniques inside your company? Comment below, and we’ll answer and discuss together.

Hi Dan! This turned out great. Was a lot of fun. Thanks again for the opportunity

http://www.InformationArchitected.com dankeldsen

Ethan – great catching up, and you’re definitely on the front edge of this newest twist on marketing. Looking forward to watching the ride on this wave (and perhaps getting involved too – stay tuned).

Anonymous

Hey Dan. Interesting conversation. I was surprised to hear you guys comparing DropBox and Carbonite. My impression is that they serve different markets – DropBox for saving & sharing files, and Carbonite for backup (which also happens to enable similar remote access capability). Both work in the cloud of course. I’ve only used one of them, though.

http://www.InformationArchitected.com dankeldsen

Jack – agree – Dropbox and Carbonite are *intended* for different markets, but that doesn’t mean that people aren’t looking for them to do things other than they were intended. And look where that took Twitter, so it’s not as though it’s a bad thing.

There are overlapping edge use-cases for both that is where the confusion/opportunity hits.

The discussion is more about how they both go about getting traffic and converting them to leads, and given the way that Dropbox is made to “go viral” (by enabling sharing), you have to admit, they’ve done a bang up job in creating a service that almost feeds itself.

Clever pricing as the use ramps up as well. Most people are unlikely to delete things out of their Dropbox, so it has a natural tendency to expand, which has extra costs as a user.

Carbonite has a bit of that as well, as backup storage explodes, but with a different twist.

Been months since we last caught up – thanks for the comment, and I’ll back-channel you to hear what the summer has been like for you.

Best,
Dan

http://www.InformationArchitected.com dankeldsen

Jack – agree – Dropbox and Carbonite are *intended* for different markets, but that doesn’t mean that people aren’t looking for them to do things other than they were intended. And look where that took Twitter, so it’s not as though it’s a bad thing.

There are overlapping edge use-cases for both that is where the confusion/opportunity hits.

The discussion is more about how they both go about getting traffic and converting them to leads, and given the way that Dropbox is made to “go viral” (by enabling sharing), you have to admit, they’ve done a bang up job in creating a service that almost feeds itself.

Clever pricing as the use ramps up as well. Most people are unlikely to delete things out of their Dropbox, so it has a natural tendency to expand, which has extra costs as a user.

Carbonite has a bit of that as well, as backup storage explodes, but with a different twist.

Been months since we last caught up – thanks for the comment, and I’ll back-channel you to hear what the summer has been like for you.

Testimonials/Quotes

“I was in a couple of Dan's sessions at the Boston AIIM Expo. I was inspired with the social networking for business. Frankly, I have been ignoring it, but now plan on getting my LinkedIn updated and other social resources ready to transfer into the business! Dan is a wealth of information on the subject. His depth of knowledge shows in his presentations.”by Mark Carlson, Director of IT Systems & Methods, Inc